Beware, for I am: Awake

 

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On This Day: Sunday June 11, 2006

This is the 162nd day of the year, with 203 days remaining in 2006.

 

Fact of the Day: Pens

Reed was the first real "pen" (c 3000 BC) and the first inks contained a gelatin derived from boiled donkey skin, which gave the ink its viscosity - but also a very unpleasant odor that had to be perfumed with musk oil. Around the 6th century BC and for more than a thousand years thereon, the quill reigned as the standard writing instrument for people of many civilizations. Swans, turkeys, and geese's large wing feather made the best quill pens. Archaeologists discovered bronze pen points embedded in the ruins of Pompeii but not until the late 1700s were stell-point pens used. A century later, fountain pens were developed - the name chosen because the ink of these pens flowed continuously, like water in a fountain. L.E. Waterman, a New York stationer, devised the practical ink reservoir system. Lazlo Biro relied on improved methods for grinding ball bearings for machines and weapons and produced the first ball-point pens suitable for writing on paper around 1944. The Pentel, introduced by Tokyo's Stationery Company, was the world's first felt-tip pen, c 1960.

 

Holidays

Feast day of St. Barnabas, Saints Felix and Fortunatus, and St. Parisio.

Hawaii: King Kamehameha I Day.

Libya: American Bases Evacuation Day (1970).

 

Events

1509 - England's King Henry VIII married Catherine of Aragon, the first of his six wives.

1770 - Captain James Cook, commander of the British ship Endeavour, discovered the Great Barrier Reef off Australia.

1793 - The first patent for a stove was issued, to Robert Haeterick.

1895 - Charles E. Duryea received the first U.S. patent granted to an American inventor for a gasoline-driven automobile.

1927 - Charles Lindbergh received the first Distinguished Flying Cross ever awarded.

1937 - Josef Stalin's great Soviet "Purge" ended.

1942 - The United States and the Soviet Union signed a lend-lease agreement to aid the Soviet war effort in World War II.

1982 - The movie "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial" opened.

1987 - Margaret Thatcher won her third consecutive term as Prime Minister.

1991 - Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines.

2001 - Timothy McVeigh was executed by injection for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people.

 

Births

1572 - Ben Jonson, English poet, playwright.

1864 - Richard Strauss, German composer.

1880 - Jeannette Pickering Rankin, first woman elected to Congress.

1910 - Jacques Yves Cousteau, French marine explorer, oceanographer.

1913 - Vince Lombardi, American football coach.

1932 - Athol Fugard, South African dramatist and director.

 

Deaths

1979 - John Wayne, American film actor.

 

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MM

Beware, for I am: Awake

So here we are. It’s almost 3 a.m. (or will be my the time I finish this post), and I cannot sleep. We prayed and wished and wanted for rain...and now it’s rubbing our faces in it. The weather started about half an hour ago. It’s ranged from booming thunder to lingering rumbles, from steady drizzles to furious attacks made on the sky to whip the dry earth into shape, and an almost eerie calm to the type of wind that could make one renew their faith in God. It’s so cool. I’ve missed it. You either sleep right through weather like this, or you stay up to keep it company while it’s passing through.

Of course, allowing oneself to wake up make one realize that they haven’t gone to the bathroom, eaten or drank anything within about 5 hours. So I figured, in for a quarter.

I signed up for this thing on Reference.com where they send you “Reference on This Day” that tells you everything about said day. And, I figure Knowledge is power, but what good is knowledge if no one knows you’ve received it? So, I thought I’d share.

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On This Day: Wednesday April 26, 2006

This is the 116th day of the year, with 249 days remaining in 2006.

Fact of the Day: Audubon

John James Audubon (1785-1851) was a youngster growing up in France when he developed an interest in drawing birds. At 18, he was sent to the United States to avoid having to serve in the army and he became fascinated with North American birds - which he studied from Florida to Labrador in Canada. In 1824, he started to consider publishing the exquisite drawings but was advised to seek a European publisher because the methods for printing the drawings was more advanced there. The engraver Robert Havell of London undertook the project and published the four-volume The Birds of America with its 435 hand-colored plates between 1827-1838. The Audubon Society was founded in 1905. Although Audubon had no role in the organization that bears his name, there is a connection: George Bird Grinnell, one of the founders of the early Audubon Society in the late 1800s, was tutored by Lucy Audubon, John James's widow.

Holidays

Feast day of St. Cletus, St. Riquier, St. Stephen of Perm, St. Peter of Braga, St. Franca of Piacenza, and St. Paschasius Radbertus.
Tanzania: Union Day.
United States: Confederate Memorial Day in southern U.S. (esp. Florida, Georgia).

Events

1514 - Copernicus made his first observations of Saturn.
1607 - A group of English colonists, including Captain John Smith, went ashore at Cape Henry, Virginia, to establish the first permanent English settlement in the Western Hemisphere.
1921 - Weather broadcasts were heard for the first time on radio, WEW in St. Louis, Missouri.
1937 - During the Spanish Civil War, German planes attacked the sleeping town of Guernica in Northern Spain. This intervention by Nazi Germany in the Spanish Civil War has been described as practice for World War II.
1941 - The first organ was played at a baseball stadium, in Chicago.
1964 - The African nations of Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged to form Tanzania. Pemba also became part of Tanzania.
1968 - The largest underground nuclear device ever to be tested in the U.S. was exploded in Nevada.
1986 - The worst nuclear power plant accident in history occurred when an explosion and fire at Chernobyl in the Soviet Union killed 32 people and sent radioactivity into the atmosphere.
1992 - Worshippers celebrated Russian Orthodox Easter for the first time in 74 years in Moscow.
1994 - More than 22 million South Africans turned out to cast ballots in the country's first multiracial parliamentary elections, choosing anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela to head a new coalition government.
2000 - Vermont governor Howard Dean signed the nation's first bill allowing same-sex couples to form civil unions.

Births

121 - Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor.
1785 - John Audubon, American ornithologist, naturalist, artist.
1822 - Frederick Law Olmsted, American landscape architect, designer of Central Park in New York City, Yosemite National Park, and others.
1889 - Ludwig Wittgenstein, Austrian philosopher.
1900 - Charles Richter, American seismologist who helped develop the Richter scale.
1936 - Carol Burnett, American Emmy Award-winning entertainer, comedienne.

Deaths

1865 - John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President Abraham Lincoln, by federal troops near Bowling Green, Virginia.
1989 - Lucille Ball, American comedienne and actress.

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Wow. Out of all that, the only thing that made this one stand out was the whole John Smith thing ^_^ I’m such a Disney fanatic.

Ok, well, I’ll eat and see how long this temporary awakeness lasts. Later.

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Your Aura Colour is Mental Tan.

Mental Tans are the scientists. They are methodical, rational, mental, patient, statistical, reasoning, sequential, leaders by logic, meticulous and clinical.

Find out what colour your aura is.

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MM